| Jonathan Swift is one of the strangest figures in English letters. To his biographers, he is still an enigma. The facts of his life can be recorded line after line, yet they reveal little about the man. What does seem to be important is what lies between the lines. But this part of Swift's life is open to speculation by theologians, psychiatrists, and literary men. Thus it is impossible in a short biographical sketch to do little more than record the facts and suggest some of the problems concerning Swift's ambiguous and contradictory life. |
| Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin on November 30, 1667. His father, Jonathan Swift, senior, an English lawyer, died before Swift was born. Swift's mother returned to Leicestershire and left her son in the care of his uncle Godwin, who provided his nephew a good education in Kilkenny School and Trinity College, Dublin. Swift entered Trinity at the age of fourteen, graduated B.A. in 1686, and worked for his M.A. until 1688. In 1688, the political turmoil that followed the Glorious Revolution made academic life seem dull, and he took a post as secretary to the Whig statesman and essayist, Sir William Temple. At Temple's estate, Moor Park, Surrey, Swift read widely and met many scholars, politicians, and wealthy Whigs. There also he met the child Esther Johnson, who is the "Stella" of his Journal to Stella and his poems. |
| Swift stayed at Moor Park for ten years, visiting Ireland twice during this decade. He made the second trip in order to take a church position. Since Temple had not managed to find him a political post in England, Swift had taken orders in the Church of Ireland (the Irish branch of the Church of England) in 1694. He spent a year as a country parson in the run-down parish of Kilroot, but didn't like the situation and returned to Moor Park in 1696. Temple was still unable or unwilling to find Swift a good place with the Whig government. When Temple died in 1699, Swift went back to Ireland as chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley. He became one of the canons of St. Patrick's Cathedral and wrote articles and letters for the English Whigs. |
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